


gold’s fake and real love hurts

by pentagonite



Category: Billie Eilish (Musician), Music RPF
Genre: Codependency, F/M, Mental Health Issues, Mutual Corruption, Non-Penetrative Sex, Sibling Incest, Songwriting, Supernatural Elements, Unexplained Magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-08
Updated: 2020-11-08
Packaged: 2021-03-07 17:53:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26861704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pentagonite/pseuds/pentagonite
Summary: It’s the same as every other birthday she’s had; there’s nothing particularly special about it. This is just another moment in their lives, guaranteed to be repeated many times more. She’d be happy to live a million days like this.In the days after, though, weird shit begins to happen.
Relationships: Billie Eilish/Finneas O'Connell, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Comments: 17
Kudos: 26
Collections: Shipoween 2020 - The Halloween Ship Exchange!





	gold’s fake and real love hurts

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cricket_aria](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cricket_aria/gifts).



> Hi, thank you for your prompts and for giving me the excuse to write this pairing. This was an utter joy to create! A deserved shoutout to my beta, P, who gave me a lot of advice about this fic when I needed it.
> 
> Here is my Ten Second Primer, for those of you at home who are unfamiliar with these two:  
> – Finneas's [Instagram post](https://www.instagram.com/p/B6OlQFpl6e0/) for Billie's birthday. Not sure of the exact time Finneas posted it, but I've made the creative decision to say it was early morning.  
> – [everything i wanted](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCTMq7xvdXU), a song written by Billie and Finneas about her depression and the strength of their personal relationship. (Also, yes, the story about Finneas refusing to write the song with her for a while because he thought it would be enabling her is true.)  
> – [i love you](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhmGwTDpPf0), written and sung by Billie and Finneas, with Finneas doing back-up vocals. They perform this song together on tour. On a floating bed. Y'know, as one does.  
> – Finneas saved Billie's life, as stated in [this interview](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2l0nQdz8E4), and she's credited him with her being alive (considering her personal struggles with mental health) too many times to count.
> 
> This story is fictional, obviously, and does not represent my actual opinions on the nature of their relationship. That being said, this was fun as hell to write, and I hope you'll enjoy reading it!

_Gold's fake and real love hurts_  
_But nothing hurts when I'm alone_  
_When you're with me and we're alone_  
  
_And let me crawl inside your veins_  
_I'll build a wall, give you a ball and chain_  
_It's not like me to be so mean, you're all I wanted_  
_Just let me hold you_  
_Hold you like a hostage_

—[hostage](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9sUkJry_XA), Billie Eilish

On the morning of her eighteenth birthday, Finneas brings her to tears. This is not some new, surprising trick of his, either; he does this to her all the fucking time, is one of the few people on Earth who _can_ do this: shower her with overwhelming affection until it fills, builds, floods inside of her, and all the collectedness that she’s gotten so good at mastering cracks in an instant.

 _You’re my reason. For everything_ , he tells her, not to her face but to the whole goddamn world, the asshole. _Happy birthday, I love you more than life itself_.

God, the sentimental fucker. He’s the absolute worst, and she loves him to death. 

Their house is quiet. She’s not sure if their parents are out, perhaps grabbing breakfast for her birthday, or if they’re still asleep in their bedroom. Either way, she knows he’s awake because he posted that thing on Instagram, and maybe he doesn’t know for sure that she’s awake yet, but—she likes to think he does know. She likes to think he can feel it inside him, the knowledge that she’s awake or asleep or upset or happy. It’s just what happens when you love someone this much; you feel their movements in your soul.

She slips into his room, silent in her motion, not wanting to disturb the peace in their home. He doesn’t turn over in bed, but she sees him freeze under the covers when the floor creaks under her foot.

Normally, Billie is loud, disruptive, and annoying. She knows she is, because she acts that way purposefully. Today, she is pensive.

She crawls into his bed like she often used to when they were kids. They don’t do it as much anymore—usually, they stick to the couch, if they’re going to have a cuddle. She doesn’t want to think too hard about why, though, so she settles beneath his blankets, the warmth of his back along her side.

“Hey,” she whispers to his shoulders, when she’s comfortable and he has yet to say anything.

His voice has an unused, paper-thin quality to it when he replies. “‘Sup.”

She almost wants to snort, but a smile blooms over her face instead. “You’re a dick,” she tells him, because she was never educated on manners as a child and has no fucking clue how to respond to shit he says sometimes.

“Hm, ‘kay,” Finneas mumbles, not even remotely offended. It’s just how she expected him to react, because she knows him and he knows her and he is the best person she knows, will ever know. “Meant it, though.”

She sighs, moving to snake an arm around his waist, and pulls him closer to her, front-to-back. They’re both in soft, warm hoodies because their house is freezing a bit from the December morning weather. Finneas goes easily, always meshing with her, following her, letting her pull him in if that’s what she wants. He’s always waited for her to give the go-ahead before he does anything. It’s how he is with her, how he’s always been: considerate.

“I know you meant it,” she says. _Yell_ , her subconscious says, the wicked little monster. _Disturb the moment_.

For once, she ignores it. Instead, she leans over to kiss him on the cheek, lips chapped against his unshaven stubble. His breath hitches, and his hand goes to grasp where hers is placed by his waist, the pads of his fingers brushing against her knuckles. This moment is only for him, just as she knows those words, while out there for anyone to behold, are only for her.

She settles against his arm, watching him, wondering what she did to deserve someone like him as her big brother. Finneas is quiet in the mornings; he usually needs time for his brain to settle in for the day, so she isn’t surprised when he says nothing else. His face has gone pink but defiant. Billie loves him an unreasonable amount for that look on his face. He’s never cared about being affectionate toward his little sister, or showing that to everyone around them. Pressing her forehead against his shoulder, she relaxes, knowing that he understands.

They fall asleep like that for another half hour, until she wakes to the sound of a car pulling into their driveway right outside his window. Finneas remains asleep, but she slips quietly out of his bed and into her own bathroom, like she was never there to begin with.

The rest of the day is normal. It’s the same as every other birthday she’s had; there’s nothing particularly special about it. This is just another moment in their lives, guaranteed to be repeated many times more. She’d be happy to live a million days like this.

In the days after, though, weird shit begins to happen.

* * *

She starts seeing things.

When it first happens, it’s blurry and she’s not entirely sure what’s going on. It feels almost reminiscent to the time she fainted two years ago, low on iron and high on adrenaline. Finneas had flipped out and called an ambulance—a total overreaction, really, considering that she’d been able to get back up a few minutes later, fine for the most part. He’s protective; it’s how he is, what he’s promised to be since they were children. She loves him for it, but Christ, he needs to chill out sometimes.

Finneas isn’t there when the flashes begin, though. She’s alone in her bedroom, and he’s at Claudia’s for the week. He can’t protect her from this. Also, she’s an adult now, and she can take care of herself, thanks.

It happens three times over the course of the week, the blurry flashes. It feels almost like she’s looking at herself in a misty mirror when she has them, and she’s sure, she’s _positive_ that she’s just seeing shit. It must be her imagination playing tricks on her. It’s nothing.

It’s not a big deal, she tries to convince herself. Her health isn’t at risk, and she isn’t _really_ fainting, she just feels… hazy, maybe. Blank. She’s in her bedroom—playing her guitar, putting away her laundry, scrolling through her phone—and things goes black for a while. The flashes come. Pictures, live memories, whatever; there’s no rhyme or reason to what’s shown to her. Sometimes it’s for ten seconds, sometimes for a bit longer. Blurry, smoked out. Then finally, they’re gone.

It’s fine. Fine.

So, for once in her life, she doesn’t tell him about it. She can have this one thing to herself, just a little while longer.

* * *

The production cuts off, Finneas’s desktop going silent. “Ugh, hate that,” she groans, legs hanging over the loveseat.

“Billie, I’m telling you it’s good,” Finneas replies from the chair, looking at her with exasperation. “Would I lie to you?”

“Yes,” she says immediately, a smile playing on her lips. He rolls his eyes. “Come on, you’re so fucking biased! Don’t you remember—”

She cuts off, feels herself go blank, and it’s then that they come.

It’s clearer, this time, compared to before. The images are so fucking clear now, she doesn’t understand _how_ , she doesn’t know why, but she feels almost as if she’s transported into another body, going through the motion of walking into a room, and—she’s in their house. It’s their living room. An overwhelming panic overcomes her, but she can’t comprehend that feeling, she’s never _felt_ that way before in her life, these can’t be her emotions—and then she realizes. On the couch, there she lies, Billie, crying, sobbing. She moves quickly, closer to herself, and then she’s pulling herself into a tight hug, pressing soothing kisses to the crown of her head.

The thing is, she remembers this moment. She remembers it vividly. From her own perspective, a year ago.

 _Billie_ , says herself, but it isn’t her, not really. Her voice is deep, solid, rough, and she’d know it anywhere. It’s fucking Finneas. There’s no way it’s not.

She’s Finneas. 

_Billie, what’s wrong? Please tell me. Please, please._

The desperation seeps through every syllable. It hurts to see herself like this, or maybe that’s Finneas’s hurt that she’s feeling— _he_ ’s the crier between the two of them. She can feel everything he felt in this moment. She doesn’t understand how this is even poss—

 _Billie_ , he pleads again, ringing in her ears. “Billie!”

She gasps, and her face is between the palms of his hands, holding her head up. She feels exhausted but saved, like he’s pulled her from drowning in a hurricane.

“Billie,” Finneas repeats, louder, and she’s herself again. His eyes are scanning her face, urgently, fingers tightened at her cheeks, and she wonders if they’ll leave bruises.

“Fuck,” she spits out, and proceeds to collapse into him.

He’s breathing short, panicked breaths; she’s not sure who’s having the panic attack here, her or him. She’s usually the drama queen amongst them. “What the _fuck_ ,” he echoes, pulling her closer, hugging her toward him like he’s afraid she’ll melt away at a moments notice.

“Oh, God,” she groans, knowing he’s going to flip out. This is officially no longer a secret; she cannot lie to him.

“What was that?” Finneas rasps. “You were fine, and then—”

He goes silent, and she can feel the tremor in his hands.

“What?” she asks, terrified to know, but she needs to be aware of what it looks like on the outside if this is going to keep happening to her.

“You just started—convulsing. Not badly, just… heavy shaking. And—shit, your eyes went spacey? I don’t know.” His hand smoothes over her hair, like he does when he’s trying to calm her from a meltdown. Burrowed in his chest, she feels safe, but still confused, still scared. She looks up at him, and when he looks down, she knows he’s come to the realization that this isn’t the first time. 

He stills. Quiet, he says to her, more calm than she expected him to be: “Billie, tell me.”

So, she does.

She’s leaning into him when she finishes answering his questions.

“You’re gonna be okay,” he says to her, softly. They’re laying across his bed, now, sitting up, with her against his chest. He’s in a sweater but she wishes he wasn’t—a part of her craves the warmth of bare skin to ground her, even if she knows Finneas is not the person who should be the one to give that to her.

She shudders, pushing those thoughts from her mind. “This is fucked,” she tells him. “So fucking _fucked_.”

“We’ll figure it out, Pirate.” She softens at the childhood nickname. “I can help you with it, the same way I’ve done with everything else.”

 _You can’t protect me from this_ , she thinks. Instead, she says, “Weren’t you going to Claudia’s?”

“No,” Finneas says, firmly, hand tightening in her hair. He says it with a tone of finality, like he’ll fight her if she tries to push it. Not that she even wants to. She just wonders if maybe she should. “I don’t need to be anywhere but here.”

She likes his girlfriend, is the thing. Claudia is great.

She loves Finneas choosing her more, though. A lot more than she’d like to admit. Her irrational jealousy was unbearable when they’d first gotten together, though she’s grown so used to it that she’s able to deal, nowadays. He doesn’t just belong to her anymore, and that’s alright, but only because she knows that he’d put her first in almost everything in his life without her asking it of him. That eats at her, sometimes. She’d been so happy for him when he found Claudia, when he’d found something for himself, just him, and she wanted to let him have that. She does let him have that, when he wants it.

The problem is that Finneas acts like he doesn’t want to have it, sometimes, and there’s nothing she can do about his choices. She’ll let him make his own choices forever—whatever makes him happiest, keeps him the most sane.

“Promise me you’ll tell me,” Finneas says to her, “the next time it happens.”

She sighs. “You know I will.”

He nods, hands tight in her hair. “Good.”

* * *

She tells him the next time, and the time after that, too. He’s there living through it with her, the times after. It goes on for months, and it gets easier each time.

Each time, it’s different: a different memory, varying degrees of clarity and blurriness, depending on how close she is to Finneas at the time. The closer she is, the clearer the image. Slowly, she begins to understand how this unusual gift works.

Each time, it’s the same: Finneas with her, looking at her, thinking of her, writing with her, singing with her, performing with her, laughing with her, being with her, and she doesn’t fucking understand, okay, she doesn’t fucking get why it’s always her becoming Finneas for a defining moment, why the memory is always _about her_. She does not understand.

Each time he witnesses it, he holds her afterward, soothes her during. He shakes too, along with her, like he’s experiencing them too. She supposes he is, in a way. Each time he isn’t there, she goes to him when she can, and he takes her hand in his as she tells him, fingers slotting perfectly between her own. Most of the time he’s calm, putting on a brave face, but sometimes he goes tense when she rehashes the memory, like he’s afraid of what she’s about to tell him.

A part of her, growing up, had believed that no one could understand Finneas like she does—they’d been inseparable from the moment she was born, kindred spirits in music, life, friendship. Now, she knows that it’s true. No one will ever get him like she does, because she can feel him in her soul; she becomes him, he possesses her, and she lives with him within her body, he finds home there, and she welcomes it every time.

At first, it’s terrifying, but it starts to become second nature. The memories stop scaring her. Perhaps they’re a blessing in disguise.

Finneas is only a handful of steps away when she experiences the memory about the song. The reminder of the fight is one that she’s been dreading; she knew it had been coming, it had been the worst fight they’d ever had. It stemmed from a recurring fight that she didn’t understand for a long time, but when her body takes her back to it, she begins to.

The flashback starts in the middle of the argument, blinding fury taking over her in three seconds flat. She’s sitting on the couch, head in her hands, and Billie isn’t crying, but she remembers that she had wanted to. She can feel Finneas’s stubbornness within her, his fear for her life—it’s so tangible, she wonders if she could hold it in her hands, if she reached inside of her to pull it out.

 _That’s my own personal nightmare, Billie_ , she-as-Finneas says. He says it quiet, not the way he usually gets during their arguments, so she knows he’s serious. _I’m not helping you write a song about killing yourself. I refuse. Fuck that._

Past Billie tells him exactly what current Billie knew was coming: it isn’t going to be about that, not really. It’s about a dream. It _is_ a nightmare. But it can be more than that, it can be about the power of not doing that, about the pain she feels when she thinks of it, about the reasons she doesn’t do it.

 _I’m not doing this for you_ , Finneas says to her. As she’s inside him, she feels the love he has for her, feels how scared he is. She wants to hold him in her arms, protect him from herself. She’s just going to hurt him. _I can’t. I literally cannot. Why do you keep pushing this?_

Past Billie pauses, looks at him, not understanding. She tells him just that. Presently, she hates the look on her face, hates the words coming out of her mouth. Understand him, she wants to scream at herself, he loves you! But she knows what comes next. Chillingly, the other Billie says to him, a baseless threat that she knows will hurt him: if you won’t do it, I’ll find someone who will.

Nausea builds inside of Finneas’s body, and Billie wonders if she’s going to throw up. She hates herself. _I can’t even look at you right now_ , he chokes out, and he leaves the room and her body at once, and then she is left with nothing but herself and emptiness.

After, she is still. She lies on her bed, soaks in her own self-hatred, and stares blankly at the ceiling.

She knows that they write the song together, one day.

She’ll end up going to him, months later, and say this: about the song. No, please just hear me out. Finneas, I love you. I know what you’re trying to do. What if the song was about us, instead? It can be about the dream a little but, but what if it was about us? 

She’s lived this already. She knows how it ends.

Still, after she’s finished shaking, she goes to his room to lie beside him. He continues to scroll through his phone, reading some article, but his arm goes around her without a glance. She fixes her eyes on his hoodie, where it says, clear and sharp: BILLIE EILISH.

“Hey,” he speaks up, when she hasn’t spoken after five minutes. “You good?”

She thinks about telling him, but decides maybe she should keep this one to herself. The memory, while harsh, feels almost precious to her. Now she understands him on a level more than theoretically, because she’s felt it for herself. “Yes,” she tells him, after being quiet for a moment. “Finneas?” she tries, weakly, flickering her eyes to his, and he’s already staring down at her, too intense for three in the afternoon.

He inhales, very, very quietly. Presses a kiss to her forehead, like he knows she needs it, and tightens his arm around her shoulders.

She breathes into his neck, then admits into his skin, “I’m screwed up.” And Finneas, the perfect boy, shakes his head above hers, but she _knows_ how fucked up she is. “I don’t know how you deal with me, dude. I’m a fucking mess.”

“Stop that,” he tells her, tiredly, like they’ve had this argument a billion times before. (They have.) “What’s going on?”

“No, I’m fine,” she mumbles before he goes into therapy mode. “Seriously. But I…” she trails off, thinking of him, how he felt talking to her about the song. There’s so much to say, but she lands on, “Thank you.”

“For what?” he asks.

She pulls back, making sure to meet his eyes, and runs her hand through his hair. Forever an untameable mess. “For saving my life.”

He cradles the back of her head with one of his hands, big and sturdy, always holding her up, keeping her standing strong. With a smile ghosting his lips, almost jokingly, he asks: “Which time?”

Seriously, she says: “All of them.”

* * *

It stops happening for a few weeks. It’s been eight months of memories and she’s grown so used to them that she almost misses them, in a twisted way, but she’s also kind of thankful for the break.

In the meantime, she and Finneas make a lot of music. Good music. Stuff that is brilliant, or at least she believes it is—not because of her singing, or her songwriting, but because of the sound. It’s all Finneas, the ingenuity of their records.

His investment in their new project is unparalleled to before, something that she comes to realize can be attributed to the fact that two weeks into it, he decides to ‘take a break from Claudia’. Billie worries, unsure about his decision, but he seems fine, for the most part. They end up spending so much time together that she wonders when they’ll get sick of each other, and at the back of her mind, she wonders if he did this for exactly that: to be around her more often, so he can be there when things happen, not wanting her to live through it alone. She tries to bring it up to him, but he brushes her off, and eventually she gives up, accepting that if this is what he truly wants, then so be it.

This is how they’ve always been with each other: worrying, and taking turns with it. She doesn’t think that will ever change.

In October, the weirdest thing happens. Something that hasn’t happened before.

A flash comes to her as she’s sleeping.

This is atypical; she’s always been awake when they’ve taken over, but when it starts, she gets why. It’s not a memory of Finneas’s that she’s experiencing this time, it’s a dream. Or, the memory of him having a dream. She doesn’t know how this whole thing works but she knows that he’s asleep, she knows this isn’t actually happening—things are hazy and tinted like a vignette, and she can feel him in his bed, slumbering.

It’s a weird dream, one that could be real if she didn’t know better. The two of them are making pancakes together, and batter going everywhere as she flings it off the whisk and into his hair. She laughs, much too loud, and he looks at her fondly, and then he pulls her forward and she leans up, opening her mouth and—

What the fuck, and _kissing_ him, no second thoughts whatsoever.

It goes from sweet to dirty much too quickly, his hands reaching up to cup her tits and her mouth opening for his tongue, and in the dream they act like they’ve done this hundreds of times before, no disgust or confusion or hesitations whatsoever. Like it’s _normal_.

She feels his initial shock when he wakes up, and she understands. In that single second, she realizes that he’s never done anything inappropriate that involves her, at least not while he’s awake. Then, he turns over, she can feel it with her still in his body, and he shudders into the pillow. She realizes that he’s hard. _He_ realizes that he’s hard. The sheer guilt and need that crawls over their skin is overwhelming to the point of sickness, and she wonders if he’s going to puke. Instead, he presses his hips forward into the mattress, and—

She gasps, in her own body once again.

Lying in her bed, wide awake, is the only option to dealing with this in the aftermath. As the minutes pass, her brain goes from quick, urgent thoughts of static to simple silence.

She doesn’t feel sick, though maybe she should.

She thinks of the world, and their opinions: it’s fucked up, it’s wrong, it’s disgusting. She thinks of the internet, and the awful and false things they’ve said about her and Finneas, and then she thinks that apparently they weren’t so awful or false after all.

She loves Finneas, even in this. Even like this. Even because of it.

She breathes in the acceptance, then opens her book to write a song about it.

Billie will probably never show this to anyone. Or maybe she will, to Finneas, one day, depending on where they are and how things are—she doesn’t know how the future will go, how the events will unfold; it’s all unknown. But as long as she has him, it’ll be alright.

She names it that, writes at the top of the page: with you, in the unknown. It’s a working title, but one nonetheless.

She falls asleep with the pen open, and the first thing she notices when she wakes up is that the ink has tainted her hands, like shocking evidence of her private, illicit affair in the dead of the night.

“What happened to your hands?” Finneas asks, when he comes down for breakfast the next morning and sees them.

She’s proud that she doesn’t feel bad, that she feels normal about it, for the most part, even though this is everything but normal. She’s proud that she doesn’t tense, not even a little, at the sound of his voice. So what if she might love him like that? So _what_ if he loves her back? She doesn’t give a fuck.

“Fell asleep writing,” she tells him, because it’s nothing he hasn’t heard before.

He smiles, reaches around her to grab a bowl for his cereal. “Anything good? Can I see?”

She focuses on chopping her apple, carefully. “I’ll show you one day,” she tells him. Inside, she knows it’s true.

Maybe she’s sick for asking, but it comes out anyway, without her looking at him. She can’t dare to, or maybe he’ll realize what she really means by the question. “Finneas, do you love me?” she asks, like she’s a child, but she isn’t. They’re adults now, and she already knows the answer.

Because he’s him, he entertains her without thinking twice about it. “‘Course,” he says, and when she looks over her shoulder to him, his eyes are on her: bright, intense, easy, happy. He puts down the dish and brings his arms around her shoulders, hugging her front-to-back, and she reaches behind to wrap her arms around his waist. He doesn’t have to provide a reason, but he does anyway: “You’re my baby sister.”

Billie laughs, feeling hollow inside. “Not a baby anymore.”

“Baby,” he mumbles behind her, teasingly. She shivers, closing her eyes, thinking of him calling her that in a different context. She can almost feel his emotions at this very moment, if she concentrates hard enough on his presence surrounding her. His nose brushes the top of her head, and she hears him murmur into her hair: “Always a baby to me.” Although she can’t see him, she knows he’s smiling; she can hear it in his voice.

* * *

In the comfort of her room, when he’s gone one evening, she settles in to sing _i love you_. She thinks, maybe, it’ll be therapeutic for her to hear the honesty in another interpretation. It’s a different experience compared to before—she knows that when they wrote the song, it had not been about Finneas. It wasn’t about how she felt about him. Everything has changed. Now, she wants to sing it because it’ll bring her catharsis, but all she can think about when she sings the words are the two of them together, her eyes closed, performing it on stage with him beside her, tears falling from her eyes, the audience’s screams dulled and the moment zeroed in on the heat of his hand intertwined with hers. All she can think about is him. It hurts, somehow even worse than it did before.

_There's nothing you could do or say, I can't escape the way I love you. I don't want to, but I love you._

* * *

It ends up consuming her for weeks. Of course it does, because she’s her and she has a one-track mind, and it isn’t unusual for her to fixate on shit to an unhealthy degree. 

She doesn’t care. She’s always cared a little too much about what others think of her, but this thing, this _one thing_ , she decides to keep for herself. The universe can go fuck itself, no lube, she doesn’t give a shit. Everyone in the fucking world thinks she’s some bad influence already, thinks she’s the devil reincarnated, that she’s a sinner and that everything about her is wrong. They all hate her. They all believe she’ll corrupt them. Fuck it. Fuck it all.

She’ll show ‘em blasphemy, if that’s what they want.

The only thing that terrifies her is Finneas: what he’ll think, and if he’ll push her away. She thinks he’ll fight it at first, much too good and noble to give into it without hesitation. She thinks of how he looks at her sometimes, the things he says to her, how he feels when she’s within him, when she is him. She focuses on the core of his heart.

Her fingers brush over the words she wrote in her book on the night the dream came to her. She picks it up, and thinks before she can talk herself out of it: I am ready to give this to him.

“I need to show you something,” Billie says. Finneas looks up from his bed, head buried in a book, then glances down at her hands, where they’re holding her songwriting journal. It’s getting cold out again, and his room is chillier than hers; maybe she should’ve worn more than a tee and thin sweatpants to his room, but she hadn’t prepared much when she’d decided it was time. 

He smiles, not knowing what is to come, and places his book aside. “A song?” he asks, and she walks forward and gets comfortable beside him, sitting upright on his bed, their legs stretched out before them.

“Yeah,” she replies, not knowing what to say. She doesn’t give it to him yet, but she rests her head on his shoulder, hoping it’ll calm her nerves. “It’s important.”

His hand goes to her thigh and he squeezes in reassurance. “I bet it’s amazing.”

“It’s about you,” she blurts, before she can stop herself. It’s something not entirely clear from the words, unless you were one of them—to anyone else, it’d be about a lover. “I wrote it about—well, us.”

“Oh,” he replies, and she decides to look at him. He seems pleased, which is a good thing, and she hopes that sticks around because she’s pretty pleased with it herself after tweaking it a thousand times. “Give it here, then,” he says, reaching for the journal, but she places a hand on his to stop him.

She takes a breath. “Promise me one thing first.”

He pauses to look at her, _really_ look at her. With mild hesitation, he says, “Okay?”

“Actually, two things.”

He rolls his eyes. “Billie—”

“Just,” she starts, “stay—after, I mean—when you’re done reading. And… don’t be mad. Okay?” His body is beginning to tense, but she doesn’t want that before he even starts to read it, so she tries to make her voice gentler. “Hey, it’s nothing bad. I’m happy. Okay?”

Finneas scans her face to make sure she’s telling the truth. She is. She lets him, then hands him the book with the page open, rests her head on his shoulder, and closes his eyes as he begins to read.

She tries to hone in on their existence, like this. With her eyes closed, she can focus, she can embrace her sentience. She can _feel_ him, within her, she can pull herself out of her own body and into his, can experience the moments of confusion with him, then the slow, steady realization, and finally, the shock.

She can hear his heartbeat in her ears.

He sits there with her words for a few silent minutes. She gives them to him, because she knows she needed them too, after the dream. She tries not to fall asleep with her eyes closed like this, which doesn’t happen because eventually, a sharp pang of resignation runs through her, sending goosebumps up her arms.

It’s agony, waiting for him to speak. Finneas swallows hard, she can hear his throat click, like he needs water and his mouth has gone bone-dry. Eventually, he whispers to her, “What’d you see?” If she wasn’t right next to him, he might’ve had to repeat it—he says it quietly, almost like if he’d said it louder, it might become more real.

Not wanting to beat around the bush, wanting this all to be out there, she tells him the truth. “The dream.”

He sucks in a breath, then makes this awful, devastated sound that makes her want to hold him in her arms. “And after seeing that you wrote—you felt—”

“Yes,” she says. Much too simple for the gravity of it.

“Fuck,” is all he says, no emotion in his tone whatsoever. Finneas’s breaths are leaving him quicker now, and she wonders if he’s about to seriously freak out. If he’s so grossed out by her and what she’s written and what she _wants_ that he’ll push her away. She can’t even bear to look at him, scared of seeing disgust painted over his features. “I did this to you,” Finneas brings himself to say next, and his voice is— _wet_. Like he’s going to cry. Fuckfuck _fuck_.

“You’re wrong,” she counters, with strength, when she gets it. He’s acting like such a big brother about this. God, he can be a fucking martyr sometimes. Does he really think _he_ corrupted _her_?

“You wouldn’t feel like this if you never knew,” he chokes out, and she looks at him. He looks like she’s the one breaking _his_ heart. “I’m the one who wants—and I’ve made you—”

(Present tense, she thinks, and her brain flatlines. The words echo, repeating back to her: _I’mtheonewhowantsI’mtheonewhowantsI’mtheonewho_ —)

Hope flares through her.

He continues, self-loathing all over his words. “You always say you’re fucked up, but I’m the one who’s fucked.”

That sentence slices through her skin like a sharp knife. She fucking hates that he’s saying this to her, that he hates this part of himself that she loves.

“Shut the fuck up,” she says, without thinking, bluntly. “Don’t talk about yourself like that.”

He stops speaking with immediacy. She didn’t actually mean for him to shut up, but maybe she can use this as a chance to say something worthwhile, something _convincingly_.

“It’s me,” is all she can think to say. She can hear the rawness in her own voice, so she knows Finneas can hear it too. She reaches over to grasp his hand, but he pulls away from her before she gets a chance. With desperation, she begs, “Hey, hey, look at me.”

“I can’t,” Finneas rasps, and she hates it. She puts so much effort into hiding away for the public—she puts on five layers, wears the baggiest clothes, puts on nothing remotely form-fitting or revealing—because she hates when people look at her. But she’s never minded when he looks at her, she’s never minded him seeing the parts of her that she minds the world seeing, because it’s _him_. She trusts him with her fucking life, as she should, because it’s practically his after he saved it so many times. So when she asks him to look at her, she needs him to fucking do it, or she might just disappear. You’re barely a person, if no one is looking at you. _Look at me_ , she thinks to him, _look._ He lets out a shaky breath before saying, “Fuck, this is—”

(Wrong? Stupid? Immoral? Disgusting?)

Billie asks: “Is this about her?” _Please say no_ , she pleads. _Don’t run from me_.

He actually brings himself to look at her after that, blinks at her in shock, and she realizes: he hasn’t even thought about the fact that he once loved someone else. This isn’t about her at all. Seconds pass, and then roughly: “That’s not—it’s not about that. It’s us. All of this is... separate.”

She nods, because it’s what she had thought, too. Breathes in slowly, then says, relieved, “Good.” 

His body is frozen, has gone into a catatonic state of shock, so she uses the opportunity to crawl onto him the way she always does, sits herself in his lap. It’s different now, though; she’s straddling him. There is a strong possibility he will push her off, but he doesn’t—instead, he allows her to do this. She grasps his face, holds him in place—not to kiss him, just to look at him, even if he refuses to look back.

“You didn’t do this,” she repeats, and he looks her in the eye. “I want this. I want you. I _love_ you.” She presses her forehead against his, and he doesn’t pull away, doesn’t _look_ away, but he doesn’t sink into it like he usually does either. Her breath catches in her throat, seeing him look back at her. “Do you want to know what I think about?”

“No,” he instantly responds, pulling away by an inch. “Billie, don’t—”

She ignores him, hand running through his hair, and it sticks up in every direction. “I think about you,” she whispers to him, their secret forever. “God, I think about how—”

“Stop,” Finneas says, so harsh that she actually does because he never speaks to her like that. “You don’t want this,” he tells her, which is just factually inaccurate and stupid, wishful thinking on his part.

“Yes I _do_ ,” she tells him, and takes his hand. The flesh is warm and his fingers are calloused, rough from his time spent with a guitar. Her hand shaking in his, she brings it over her body, helping him touch her, guiding his movements as he brushes against her breasts, her nipples, her hips. She goes alight, breath stuttering out of her, focusing on his touch. Then, she presses his fingers to the core of her, through the thin material of her sweatpants, and she gasps at the feeling of him touching her. He isn’t pulling away, she thinks with joy.

“Billie,” he breathes, almost like he’s in pain, like she’s stabbed him in the chest.

“Feel that,” she breathes back, “Jesus, Finneas, feel it. I’m wet.”

He shakes his head, but doesn’t move his hand. His eyes are trapped on the sight of his hand touching her.

She gathers her courage, leans into his ear to whisper. “I’m wet for you.”

He shudders, doesn’t push her away, and his fingers twitch against her cunt. A breath hitches in her throat.

“I think about you, and I get like this,” she continues, quiet and private, only for him to know. “I think of—the first time you shaved.” He’s asked for her help, and she’d given it to him, had held his face in her hands and dragged the razor across his jaw, careful and gentle, and he’s shivered over and over until she asked him what was up, and all he could say was that his face was sensitive, but when she was done she’d looked down and he was—

Finneas swallows, shuts his eyes, but he doesn’t push her back. They’ve never spoken about that, had written it off so easily.

“Your hair was long then,” she tells him, hips pressing up, over and over like she’s grinding against his hand. It feels so good, she can’t stop, she feels like this fog of lust is taking over her. He’s hard, beneath her, she can feel his dick against the curve of her ass. Her hands fist in his hair, and his eyelashes flutter, like he likes that. She’d known he would. She laughs, feeling light and empowered. “It looked ridiculous, but I thought you were beautiful.”

His lips quiver, like he wants to smile. Finally, he says, eyes soft, “You were always the pretty one.”

She’s breathless with the knowledge that he might just play along, that he won’t stop her.

Too soon, she pleads, quiet: “Kiss me.”

His eyes shutter, and he stills again, like he might pull back. Like kissing is too intimate, even though she’s rubbing against him right now, she can feel him hard underneath her.

She takes his face between her hands, and speaks from the heart. “Look at me,” she says, quiet. “I wouldn’t be alive without you.” He knows that’s true; he can’t deny it. It would be too much to say to anyone else, but he’s Finneas, and he can handle the weight of it. He lives the weight of it constantly. “You’re my reason,” she says to him, hoping he’ll understand. “You’re my big brother, you’re my best friend, you’re everything,” she recites, words she’s already told him before on various different occasions, but this time it’s different. “I want to kiss you. Don’t you want to kiss me?”

She can read him easily. He looks like he wants to say yes, so he says nothing instead.

Nodding, even though he didn’t even speak, she tells him: “If you don’t want this, then I won’t make you.” Because she’s easy like that. All she really needs is for him to stay in her life—how he chooses to be there is in his hands. “I just want you to be happy. And this would make me happy.”

It’s not a yes, but he asks her, “How can it?”

“How can it not?” she returns, like it’s that simple.

He goes quiet.

She leans up to press her lips to his forehead. She wants him to understand. “I’ve wanted to kiss you for years.”

His eyes are wet, when she looks at him. “Don’t lie to me,” he says, like he’s offended that she’d say such a thing, like he’s the only one who’s ever felt this between them.

She swallows against the lump in her throat. “I’m not,” she says, her thumb smoothing over his cheekbone. “I never understood why I couldn’t kiss you. I didn’t get it. Maybe I didn’t think of it romantically, then. It wasn’t... like this. It was just me wanting to show you how much I love you.”

He breathes—inhale, exhale. “People think you’re so tough,” he starts, “but then you say shit like that to me, and—”

She grins. A joke means maybe, just maybe, he won’t say no. “Hush your mouth.”

Two beats, and then, with a trembling voice, the most terrifying and beautiful words she’s ever heard: “You hush my mouth.”

She looks at him. Takes a solid minute to just look at him, to understand what he’s asking. And then, without speaking, she leans forward, hesitates once when he stops breathing, and smiles, before kissing him.

The fight melts out of him the second she touches him.

“Finneas,” she gasps, their lips pressed together, but he doesn’t answer. All he does is kiss her back, hard and desperate, like he’s giving in. She can taste the relief in his mouth as his teeth graze her lips, she can feel the desperation in the way his hands hold at her hips, fingers pressing bruises to her skin. That will leave blue-black marks all over her when they’re done, but she knows that she’ll be grateful for the reminder that is all real. He feels free beneath her, like he was the rubber band she pulled at to see how far it could stretch until it snapped in half, and now that it has, it’s able to become whatever it wants. What he wants is her—she can tell from the way his mouth goes to suck at her lip like he’s been thinking about doing so for ages, but hadn’t allowed it of himself until she’d told him he can have it.

She wants him to put his hands on her, everywhere, in all the places she hadn’t wanted anyone else to look at. Her shirt is the only barrier between that coming true.

It needs to go, she thinks, and so it does. Finneas doesn’t dare glance down at her when it flies onto the floor, keeps his gaze firmly on her lips, licking his own.

“You can look at me, y’know,” she breathes to him, so happy that she has him. His lips quirk, ruefully, and she picks up one of his hands and brings it to her tits once again, making sure his thumb is positioned by her nipple. “Want you to touch me,” she tells him, and he still isn’t looking, so fine, she’ll kiss him instead. His lips open up with hers, and she keeps it open so she can trace his lips with the tip of her tongue.

He huffs a laugh against her mouth, but he doesn’t stop her until she’s finished. She wants to take her tongue and drag it along all of his molars. “You’re so weird,” he murmurs, but his hand slips against her tits and she feels herself get wetter. 

“You like weird,” she counters. She nips at his lip with her teeth, and his hand tightens on her, squeezing. She bites at him, harder, and she can feel his cock thicken under her. Grinding forward, her clit bumping against the damp cotton of her underwear, she rolls again until her cunt is directly over his dick, she can feel it against her, twitching, and she knows he can feel how hot and wet she is through the material.

“Oh,” she breathes, and he makes this sweet, hurt sound in his throat, one that she wants to lick out with her tongue, so she slots their lips together once again.

A deep groan echoes in his bedroom, and she doesn’t know if it was him or her or both. Hitching her hips, she ruts upward until she’s sliding along him, rubbing herself on him beneath her, the desperation crawling over her skin. Billie can’t concentrate on kissing like this, so she hides in his neck, kissing and sucking on it as she grinds even harder. His hands help her along with the motions, pulling her forward and backward until they’re moving with each other, working at it together. She knows she can get there, she just needs him to—

“Billie,” Finneas husks, and she whines, high. _Yes, talk to me_ , she sends him, and he listens. “Perfect, oh, God, I can’t believe—fuck, you should—hear yourself right now, you sound fucking—indecent. You’re everything to me, everything, shit, that’s, oh, oh, please, oh, angel, I’m—”

She cants her hips, her clit rubbing deliciously along the length of his dick, until she— _fuck_ —she—

Shaking, she closes her eyes, concentrating on him, and she can feel him about to—

Shuddering, as one, she feels as he goes off beneath her, the clothes between them going wet, and she presses forward until she convulses, too. They do it the same way they do everything else: together.

* * *

Her nineteenth birthday comes. She reads what he’s written for her, breathes deeply, then makes her way over to his bedroom. He’s awake, and doesn’t pretend to be asleep like he usually does; instead, he raises his head to look at her, and when their eyes lock, she snaps the lock of his door shut from the inside. Slowly, so he can prepare himself, she makes her way over to his bed, gets on it and straddles his body, the length of his torso under her hips. She pins his arms above his head, hand tight over his wrists, and he looks at her: open, knowing, hers for the taking. She almost can’t remember it ever being different.

She leans down, and kisses him. He doesn’t think twice before returning it.

Afterward, the flashes never come back. 

**Author's Note:**

> Comment moderation is on; unwarranted hate will not be addressed. Let me know your thoughts, if you have them!


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